Google Requests Default Judgment Against DMCA Scammers
Google's lawsuit against two men who it accuses of 'weaponizing' DMCA takedown notices is entering its final stage. The defendants allegedly targeted tens of thousands of URLs with fraudulent notices. Since the defendants failed to respond, Google now requests a default judgment at a California federal court. The company doesn't seek any money, but wants to put an end to the abusive and fraudulent actions.
It’s a powerful, widely-used tool that takes millions of URLs and links offline every day. This often happens for a good reason, but some takedown efforts are questionable or even outright abusive.
Google is no stranger to DMCA abuse. The company has processed more than 8 billion takedown requests over the years and while most notices are legitimate, scammers regularly try to game the process to gain an advantage.
Last November, the search giant had seen enough. In a lawsuit, filed at a federal court in California, Google accused Nguyen Van Duc and Pham Van Thien of sending over 100,000 fraudulent takedown requests. Many of these notices were allegedly filed against third-party T-shirt shops.
